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FTC ups the game on spam protection

I’m in Atlanta, Georgia at Silverpop’s Customer Conference. One of the hot topics here has been yesterday’s announcement by the FTC that it is changing the rules in the US around unsubscribing.

Essentially you need to ensure that your reader can kiss you off with a single click, and without having to enter more than an email address.

I doubt this level of regulation will ever make the statute books in the UK, but then (as I’ve posted and talked about so often) the difference between law and best practice remains wide.

But if you were, say, Sainsburys,and you were American, you’d have 45 days to improve your opt-out process.

I got frustrated with the company last week as I get its emails in multiple accounts, but to opt out I need to remember username, password and which email account I signed up with. Hitting ‘SPAM’ is SO much easier. Sorry guys.

They are by no means the worst over here in the UK – a ‘major drinks brand’ incurred my displeasure several months back for asking would-be unsubscribers to fill in 42 fields of required data (inside leg measurement was probably the cut-off point).

When will marketers learn that if people want to go, you should let them go quietly… unless they want to make them REALLY hate them?

Michael Weston is the MD of Silverpop and is a regular guest blogger at E-consultancy. The views of the author do not necessarily reflect those held by the publisher.

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